In The Politics of Individualism (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher F. Karpowitz and Kelly D. Patterson make an important contribution by defining a new construct, moral individualism. They show that it is prevalent in the USA and may help explain various concerning outcomes, from resistance to public health measures to low voter turnout.
This post is a short review. Anyone who is attending this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association is welcome to an authors-meet-critics session about the book on September 6 from 8:00 to 9:30 am (early on a Sunday morning!) with comments by Michigan’s Yanna Krupnikov, Stanford’s Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, North Carolina’s Marc J. Hetherington, and me.
Karpowitz and Patterson define moral individualism as the conjunction of two beliefs: 1) any “authorities external to the self’ must curtail or abridge a person’s liberty, and 2) “only moral choices that are self-authorized are legitimate” (p. 32).
They measure this construct in nationally representative samples using an ingenious survey design. In part, they ask respondents to name who is most important when they’re deciding how to live their lives or what is best for society. The ten response options include a religious leader, a scientist or expert, and a family member, among others.
Respondents are then asked to evaluate ten statements about how to treat their chosen source, e.g., “Nobody, not even [the favored source] can decide what is right and wrong, except for me” and “The world has many truths, and whatever I learned from [the favored source] is just one of them.”
A moral individualist is someone who does not feel bound by what their own most important sources may say.
Scores on this scale do not correlate strongly with measures of economic individualism, such as “Any person who is willing to work hard has a good chance of succeeding.” Thus economic and moral individualism are not the same construct. Likewise, moral individualism does not have a partisan valence: it is found on both sides of the aisle. It does not correlate strongly with attitudes toward Donald Trump or MAGA.
Moral individualism does, however, correlate with important outcomes, even when other factors are controlled. It predicts lower odds of voting and serving other people, less commitment to family, less religious attendance, weaker sense of efficacy (confidence that one can make a difference), less support for patriotism, much less support for public health measures during COVID, and more suspicion that other people were violating COVID restrictions. Controlling for party, ideology and support for Donald Trump, moral individualism correlated with less opposition to the riot on January 6.
Traditionally, governments have tried to counteract moral individualism. For example, public schools and colleges (as well as private and parochial ones) not only instruct students to honor various external authorities–from the Constitution to science–but they also present the school itself as something that should be honored. Military recruitment campaigns often emphasize one’s duty to country. In WWI, Uncle Sam said, “I want you for U.S. Army!” Karpowitz and Patterson trace the evolution of the all-volunteer Army’s slogans from the communitarian “Join the People Who Have Joined the Army” (1973-1980) through “Be All You Can Be” (1980-2000) to the individualistic “Army of One” (2001-6).
State-supported efforts to combat moral individualism may not work today and could provoke a backlash. Indeed, there may be legitimate debates about whether and in what ways moral individualism is a public problem. Moral individualism correlates with outcomes like religious attendance and patriotism–but also voting and political confidence–which may concern some of us but not others.
In any case, institutions apart from the government have stakes. For example, the statements that measure moral individualism are explicit rejections of the various kinds of authority that religions tend to claim, and (as noted) the construct correlates with lower church attendance. So religions might want to work against moral individualism.
I couldn’t improve on the authors’ analysis of the American population (by way of large samples). But I am curious about distinctions that might emerge in more intensive qualitative studies, particularly if the samples included relatively thoughtful and self-conscious subjects. I think that people who are moral individualists could differ on dimensions captured by three broad questions:
1. To what extent are you concerned about other people’s moral autonomy?
You can believe that your life is your own business and that no one should interfere with it. That belief can be the basis for not feeling compelled to do anything for anyone else. Or you can believe that you and all other humans have the right to be the authors of their own lives and that this principle is worth fighting for.
Let’s say you are an American who believes that every human being has a right to moral autonomy. You should probably conclude that your own moral autonomy is pretty extensive and safe but that other people (from those incarcerated in US prisons to all citizens of North Korea) are not able to decide for themselves what is right. This is a reason to work and even sacrifice to enhance all people’s moral autonomy.
Karpowitz and Patterson ask people to respond to the statement, “Only I can decide what is right. I cannot even trust [my preferred source] to help me decide.” I am curious whether respondents would say that other people should also be allowed to decide what is right for them (most Americans would probably agree so far) and that they have an obligation to defend other people’s freedom (which would probably be rarer). This distinction would divide selfish or egoistic moral individualists from altruistic ones.
2. How demanding is it to decide for yourself what is right?
Karpowitz and Patterson ask for responses to this prompt: “My own judgment is more important than [my favorite source’s] judgment.” Moral individualists agree with that statement.
But what must an individual do to make a judgment? Some people may think of judgment as synonymous with “preference” or even “desire.” Nothing should be binding on me except what I happen to want. But at least some people may think that the burden to decide what is right falls on the individual and is a heavy one.
In breaking with the Catholic Church, Martin Luther upheld the individual obligation of each sinner to discern the actual truth. He was not relativistic or morally permissive (at all) but was a kind of moral individualist.
Michael Foucault defined spirituality as “the search, practice, and experience with which the subject carries out the transformations on himself that are necessary to have access to the truth” (Foucault 1982). According to practitioners of spirituality, to know the truth, one must make oneself deserving of it, which may require intensive study, prayer, meditation, confession, direct engagement with the original Word, or even fasting and self-mortification.
To be sure, spiritual practices can be collective, but they can also be individual or even solitary. Science, on the other hand, presumes that truth arises from organized, transparent, cumulative work that does not require any particular kind of spiritual preparation. Thus we might imagine that some serious practitioners of spirituality are moral individualists, whereas scientists should not be.
We could divide moral individualists between those who think that deciding what is right is hard and those who think it comes automatically. Emerson, cited several times in the book as a moral individualist, may also be a serious spiritual striver, in the way that Foucault means.
3. What is the role of other people in supporting your moral individuality?
Reformation theologians offered a particular kind of moral individualism when they preached the Priesthood of All Believers and the doctrines of Faith Alone and Scripture Alone. They removed the mediation of the organized Church, claiming that each believer stands alone before God.
The question then arose: Why should there be Protestant churches at all? The dominant answer was that although each person is ultimately responsible, we need other people’s support. Someone who holds this view might agree with this item in Karpowitz and Patterson, “My own judgment is more important than [my favorite authority’s] judgment,” even if they’ve chosen their pastor as their authority. God judges you as an individual, weighing your personal faith; you get no points from the clergy’s behavior. Nevertheless, most Protestants have assumed that they are more likely to find their way to truth and good behavior if they belong to an organized community whose congregants and leaders can give them reminders and encouragement.
In sum, I think that moral individualism could be compatible with some altruistic, introspective, and communitarian values. I suspect that those combinations are rare and that most Americans who score high on Karpowitz’ and Patterson’s scale are also selfish, unreflective, and isolated. But the exceptions might be important.
Source: Michel Foucault, L’herméneutique du suject: cours au Collège de France (1981-2) (Gallimard, 2001), pp. 16-18. See also: the classical liberals versus the “egoists”; bootstrapping value commitments; Foucault’s spiritual exercises; why be introspective? etc.